2019 Visiting Fellows

Dr Sanaa Alsarghali

Dr Sanaa Alsarghali

Sanaa Alsarghali is the first female obtaining a PhD in Constitutional Law in Palestine. She received her PhD from Lancaster University and an LLM in law from Durham University. In 2016 she became the first female Assistant Professor at an-Najah law school in Palestine. Sanaa was awarded a full scholarship from An-Najah University to study constitutional Law in order to participate in the constitutional building in Palestine after her return from studying her PhD in the UK. Her thesis focused on how the Palestinian Basic Law facilitated the concentration of executive powers and made suggestions for future constitutional designs in Palestine. In 2018 she was elected as the Chairwoman of ‘Women, Media and Development’ (TAM), an NGO that intends to change the stereotypical image of the Palestinian women in the Media. This made Sanaa the youngest Chairwoman of an active NGO in Palestine. Previously, she worked with TAM as a TV presenter through Al Fajer TV local station. Her social and political talk show 'TAM Time' was screened on the Palestinian National TV for two years. In Late 2018 she became the acting director of the Constitutional Studies Centre which she also co-founded at An-Najah University. The centre started making local impact by its public educational videos on the constitutional situation in Palestine. She is also credited with introducing new teaching themes at the university, notably ‘Constitutional Law and Gender’. Her text book: The Constitution we Desire? A Women’s perspective (in Arabic) will be ready for launching this September. She is currently working with the Palestinian Initiative for Democratic Dialogue (Miftah), TAM, and the Centre on the constitutional educational campaign which is raising awareness amongst Palestinians about their constitutional rights. In December 2018 Sanaa received the Outstanding Alumni Award from Lancaster University, the first Arab Palestinian Alumni to gain this award from Lancaster. During her time as a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow in Constitutional Law in July and August 2019, Sanaa intends to continue working on turning parts of her PhD thesis into a book titled ‘Constitutionalism in Palestine’.

Dr Eleonora Bottini

Dr Eleonora Bottini

Eleonora Bottini joined the University of Caen Normandy (France) as a full professor in September 2018. Previously, she was an associate professor at the Sorbonne Law School (2015-2018) and a visiting professor at Columbia Law School (2017). She teaches constitutional law (French and comparative), European Human Rights Law, Administrative Law and Legal Theory. She has also worked as a comparative law specialist at the Italian Constitutional Court.

Her research focuses on Constitutional Theory and Comparative Constitutional Law. Her doctoral thesis, now published in a book (Dalloz, 2016), was about “Constitutional sanction as a doctrinal argument”. It explains the origins and evolutions of constitutional and judicial review as justified or rejected as a way of sanctioning the violation of the constitution.Her recent research work is related to the uses of comparative law by supreme and constitutional courts. She is interested more generally in comparing the legal reasoning of constitutional judges on various matters, such as electoral legislation or emergency powers.

As a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow, Eleonora will work on a forthcoming paper about the argument of the modernization of “old” constitutions as a justification of constitutional amendments, from a comparative perspective.

Dr Maria Cahill

Dr Maria Cahill

Maria Cahill is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin (LLB, 2003) and the European University Institute (LLM, 2004; PhD 2008). She lectured at the National University of Ireland, Galway, before joining the Faculty of Law at University College Cork in August 2008. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of European and Comparative Law at the University of Oxford in 2015. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Cambridge Law Journal, American Journal of Jurisprudence, German Law Journal, Dublin University Law Journal, Irish Jurist, and the Irish Journal of European Law. As a result, her ideas have been relied on in a judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal and informed arguments in cases before the High Court and Supreme Court of Ireland as well as the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. In 2017, Dr Cahill received the Early Stage Researcher of the Year Award at University College Cork. She is a Research Associate of the Programme for the Foundations of Law and Constitutional Government, in the University of Oxford's Faculty of Law.

Dr Peta Sephenson

Dr Peta Stephenson

Peta Stephenson is a Lecturer in the School of Law at the Queensland University of Technology. She teaches and researches in the fields of Australian constitutional law, public law and statutory interpretation, and has a particular interest in the executive power of the Commonwealth, the relationship between the legislative and executive branches of government, and federalism. Peta has published on these topics in leading Australian law journals and edited collections. Peta holds a PhD in constitutional law and a BA/LLB (Hons) from the University of Queensland. Prior to commencing her career as an academic, Peta practised as a solicitor in a commercial law firm in Brisbane and also worked as a policy officer at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra.

Dr Jeong-In Yun

Dr Jeong-In Yun

Jeong-In Yun is a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow with the ARC Laureate Project in Comparative Constitutional Law. Yun is a Research Professor at the Legal Research Institute of Korea University. She taught Constitutional Law, Public Policy and Government since 2013. Her research interest is in comparative constitutional law, legal philosophy with a focus on the paternalism in law, constitutional amendment process with public participation (crowdsourcing), and political party law. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in constitutional law from Korea University with a comparative study on the scope of constitutional freedom between German Basic Law and Korean Constitutional Law. She was awarded a 3-year Young Researcher Grant from National Research Foundation of Korea in 2017 and the Best Paper Awards from the Constitutional Academic & Professional Association with the article on “Instrumentalizing the People in the Name of the People? Party Democracy and Civic Education facing the Rise of Populism” in 2017 and with the article on “Democratic Legitimacy in the Constitution-making Process” in 2018. She is an editor of “Journal of Constitutional Law” which is published in Korean. Currently, she is working on a comparative constitutional law project on the problem of judicialization of politics and politicization of the judiciary in the non-established democracies.